The Football Players, 1908 by Henri Rousseau

In 1908, the first international rugby match was played in Paris between France and England. Rousseau painted this happy scene that same year. The football players almost look like cut-out puppets, their positive shapes seem pasted onto the scene in collage-like style. Rousseau confuses perspective and scale and makes us wonder which we should believe - the scale of the men or the trees. The football player closest to us in the center of the painting is said to be a self-portrait of Rousseau. There is no sun or moon in this painting, but Rousseau included his trademark circle shape, this time as a ball.